Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Bill Gates announced he is going to refocus efforts at The Gates Foundation toward curbing climate change; he now sees climate change as the paramount challenge we face as a planet. Last week at the annual TED conference in LA, Gates declared that the only way to alleviate climate change is to not simply reduce our carbon emissions, but to eliminate them altogether. According to Gates, the world’s climate emissions are the result of four factors: population, services, energy, and carbon (expressed CO2 = P x S x E x C). But in order to achieve a carbon-neutral planet, we need to use nothing but climate-neutral energy. Given current energy solutions, however, this is not yet feasible—which is why Gates has decided to apply his mega philanthropic resources toward advances in clean energy. According to Gates, we should be living in a completely carbon-neutral society by 2050.

On a related note, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is set to open its new campus at 500 Fifth Avenue North (across from the Seattle Center) in the spring of 2011: